Friday, 23 January 2015

A Cartoon & Comic Book Tour Of London No.9: Sir David Low

Our new series for 2015! Daily Constitutional editor Adam takes us on a Cartoon & Comic Book Tour of London – 20 stops on a metropolis-wide search for all things illustrated. He'll be taking in everything from Gillray and Hogarth, to Scooby Doo and on to Deadpool and beyond! In addition he'll guide you to the best in London comic book stores as well as galleries that showcase the best in the cartoonist's art.

Panel 9: Sir David Low

As I near the halfway point of this series,
I pause once again to reflect on the timing of our Cartoon
& Comic Book Tour of London.

Our tour began on the 1st January 2015 with Hogarth & Gin Lane. We then called in on George du Maurier in Hampstead and were all set to bring the series into the 21st Century with a look at the bloodthirsty alternate history comic book Über* on the 7th January when the news came through from Paris of the murders at Charlie Hebdo.

I could not have chosen a more serious time
to continue blogging about being funny with a pen and paper.

But then the business of drawing a picture
has often been a serious one indeed…

Cartoonist David Low (born in Dunedin in
1891) was described in his Guardian obituary as, "The dominant cartoonist
of the western world." He was knighted in 1962.

His cartooning career began in his native
New Zealand, and continued in Australia – where he was once called a
"bastard" to his face by the Prime Minister. But then that particular
high office has often been held by bluff, straight talking men. Or humourless
boors as they are sometimes known. Such men hate to be mocked.

After World War Two, Low's name was found to be in
the so-called black book of personas non grata, public enemies to be arrested
after the Nazi invasion of Britain.

Even in this country Low was viewed in some
quarters as a warmonger for his gloves-off depictions of the despots of
1930's Europe…

Low's take on the Molotov/Ribbentrop, or Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact of 1939

Low arrived in London in 1919 and worked as
a cartoonist on The Star and The Herald (both now defunct) as well as The
Guardian, but it is his 13-year stint at the London Evening Standard (1927 to
1950) for which he is best remembered.

In 1937 Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels
complained to Lord Halifax (then Foreign Secretary) that Low's work was
damaging diplomatic relations between Germany and Britain. Herr Hitler, it seemed, could become rather cross when Low got to work.

Strange that men such as Geobbels and Hitler, with such strong
stomachs for genocide, would be so upset at a couple of strokes from a pen.

David Low was seldom far from my thoughts
in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo murders.

Martin Rowson,
whose work appears in The Guardian, brought it all into focus for me – as he so often does, usually with his wonderful cartoons. But this time his words made the case. His words, it turns out, are every bit as eloquent and economical and angry and humane as his drawings. On the
7th January, under the sub-heading "Mockery is hated by the powerful and
despotic – which is why it must continue", he wrote…

Laughter, it needs to be shouted, is one of
the things humans do best, mostly because it makes us feel better. I’ve been
convinced for years that laughter is a hardwired evolutionary survival
mechanism that helps humans navigate our way through life without going mad
with existentialist terror. That’s why we laugh at all those terrifying things
like death, sex, other people and the disgusting stuff that pours out of our
bodies on a daily basis.

Moreover, we’re very, very good at laughing
at those who place themselves above us, either as our leaders or intending to
impose their beliefs to make everyone else exactly like them. That’s the basis
of the craft I shared with my murdered colleagues in Paris. This universal
capacity to use mockery as a form of social control is one of the main things
that makes us human. Crucially, it’s also in defiance of the primary need of
the powerful to be taken seriously, often against all the external evidence of
their innate absurdity.

"I have learned from experience that,
in the bluff and counterbluff of world politics, to draw a hostile war lord as
a horrible monster is to play his game. What he doesn't like is being shown as
a silly ass."

Low is remembered with two plaques in
London, one in Hampstead (as mentioned in an earlier post in this series, click HERE to read) and one in Kensington where he lived. Here's the plaque…